Im not really sure where to post this so if this is the wrong place I'm sorry. I have a question for folks who have extensive experience with PayPal. I have my car up for sale on my local craigslist. I got a text from a guy who said he wanted to buy my car. He never gave me his name and he didn't try to haggle on price. He didn't even want to come and look at it first. HUGE red flags for me. My question is can a person steal money from you if they have your PayPal email? This dude wanted mine and he wanted it like right now. I lied to him and told him I didn't have one. He bugged me for a couple of hours about setting one up. I told him to call me but he said he was on some military base and was unable to. The whole thing screamed fraud to me. I told him there was no way I was doing business with him unless he showed up in person. Haven't heard form him since. So could he have stolen money from me just by having my PayPal email? Just curious. Oh the number was from the 909 area code which Is near me.

 

No he can't steal your money with your paypal address.
What he can do is pay for your car with a stolen credit card.
You were smart not selling to someone that can't even pick up the phone to talk to you.

 

Thanks for the reply Ramlt! I recently had my checking account compromised by someone. I am so sketchy about people stealing from me, it completely slipped my mind that he would be trying steal from someone else and then in turn steal my car from me. If I thought the police would do something about it, I would give them his phone number. But who knows, thats probably stolen too. He really is a lousy crook. If he had been more patient, and actually called me and got his story right, I may have fell for it.

 

they can use the email and sent a fake paypal payment statement. Saying that you have been paid. But it WONT be in your account.

 

WHen they won't talk to you in person, then don't deal with them.
Either one of 2 things happen- they send you the money, then your PP account gets frozen, meaning you can't even withdraw the funds that are yours, or you get a fake statement from them, saying you've been paid. If you click on any links in there, voila, they have all the info needed to access your account.

 

I was trying to sell a diamond ring on kijiji (a better version of Craigslist up here) and the scam e-mails were fun to reply to and mess with. They usually stand out, as most won't haggle on the price... Which makes it obvious because people seem to think $500 and a sob story is enough for me to sell a ring worth $7000.

 

Thanks for the replies. I don't put things up for sale much on Craigslist and the few times I have, I have sold them without a problem. This is the first time I have had someone try something like this. There are some evil people out there that will do just about anything to steal from others. Its sad.

 

I wouldn't buy any car without inspecting it myself, UNLESS maybe they were established ebay seller and had 30+ clear closeup photos showing details of common wear/rust areas of cars to prove it's condition. Anyone who would buy a car on CL based on 1 or 2 of the typical bad quality pictures found on CL is probably a scammer.

 

As bad as scammers are, the ones who are worse are the ones stealing elderly people's life savings and scamming people who are looking for a job.